Food For Thought?

[nelliebee]

For those over 40.......





My mum used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread butter on bread on the same wooden cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

Our school sandwiches were wrapped in greaseproof paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e. coli

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake or at the beach instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

We all took PE ..... and risked permanent injury wearing a pair of Dunlop plimsoles instead of having designer label athletic trainers with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors that cost as much as a small car. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

We got the cane for doing something wrong at school. They used to call it discipline and we complained about it at the time, yet we all grew up to accept the rules and to honour & respect those older than us.

We had 30+ kids in our class and we all learned to read and write, do our multiplication tables and correctly spell almost all the words needed to write a grammatically correct letter......., FUNNY THAT!!

We all said prayers in school and sang the national anthem, and getting detention after school caused all sorts of negative attention.

We all thought that we were supposed to accomplish something before we were allowed to be proud of ourselves.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital stations on Sky TV. We weren't!!

Oh yeah ... and where was the antibiotics and sterilisation kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played “He” and “King of the Hill” on piles of gravel left on vacant building sites and when we got hurt, mum pulled out the 2/6p bottle of Dettol and then we got our backside spanked.

Now it's a trip to A&E, followed by a 10 day dose of antibiotics and then mum calls the lawyer to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.

How could we possibly have known that?

We never needed to get into group therapy and/or anger management classes and on-one had ever heard of such a thing as ADHD.

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How on earth did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA.

AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED.

I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!

Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.

AAAAh, those WERE the days!!!!

[Maydup]

Yes i remember all that! .... Some good, some bad times. i prefer today.

[mccfluff]

you couldn't of posted this on an internet forum back then......

[Baldric]

rivercottage.net . . . good eh?

[vakayu]

Well said nelliebee,hoe did we survive indeed lessons to be learned I think.

[vakayu]

^how not hoe

[ummmm]

It's a load of nonsense.

I didn't get spanked, I've never sang the national anthem, I'm allergic to bees, I've broke loads of bones, I had the latest trendy trainers....

Can't remember the rest...

[mccfluff]

i just enjoy the irony of using the internet and emails to hark on about the good ole days....

[ummmm]

Lol...very good point.

[Canary42]

It's all very well to blether on about surviving e-coli, food poisoning, dangerous activities, etc but those many poor folk who didn't survive it aren't around today to refute your arguments are they ?

[Cloverjo]

I still use the same chopping board for everything.
Do kids really have coolers for their sandwiches now?
Mine didn't, and he left school only 4 years ago.

[Canary42]

P.S. I'm well over 40 and my early childhood was partly spent in air raid shelters as bombs rained down all around. But I would never advocate a return to such conditions.

[ummmm]

The days before the MMR....Oh how I loved getting mumps....

[NoMercy]

So is ADHD not real then?

[woofgang]

yes indeed, The Krays did grow up to respect rules and discipline didn't they?
Honestly, rubbish like this....

[AB Editor]

It's strawman stuff Cleverjo.

I like your argument about ecoli Canary!

I always think it's unfair when those born during or just after the war ("baby-boomers") seem to take "credit" for the hardships endured by those who fought in WW2.

I always wonder who brought up the current generation anyway, it's certainly not these old people who like to rattle on about how it was better in their day :)

[ummmm]

No NoM...they are just naughty children that the parents can't control because they don't slap them about!!

[rockyracoon]

I think kids how had ADHD back then were just called naughty gits! Looking back now there was one boy in my class at primary school and I'm sure he would have been diagnosed with ADHD or similar.

Clovejo I put coolers in my kids lunch boxes if they are having tuna sandwiches when it's hot. I wouldn't eat a sandwich like that myself if it's not come out of the fridge, much less let my kids eat it. Last year the cooler came in the way of a frozen drink that had thawed out by lunch time.

[suechu]

Indeed, ummmm, these were my days too. I clearly remember that my primary school class in '58 numbered 32 and we learned stuff all the same, hammered into us (almost literally!)

[jeffa]

"I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!"

I challenge you to do without anything not invented, say, in the last fifty years. I doubt you could last a week...

[NoMercy]

Who could forget the good old days where a man could beat and force himself on his wife without fear of legal recourse because a) it was not illegal for a man to have set with his wife against her will and b) Police wouldn't want to get involved in a "domestic"...